POLLUTED AIR

Because air quality and pollution play far-reaching roles in many environmental issues of modern times such as human health, environmental degradation, and climate change, they receive ongoing worldwide attention. Now numerous scientific researchers are demonstrating that air pollution is affecting the environment by reducing the amount of precipitation released from storm clouds. Long-term studies conducted by atmospheric scientists at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) are providing some of the most detailed evidence of this phenomenon so far. The DRI research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is producing a mounting body of scientific evidence to link dirty air with another environmental problem-drought. This is especially bad news for drought-ravaged western states, such as Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, that depend on runoff from snowpack to fill their streams, rivers, and lakes and recharge the groundwater. For example, an estimated 90 percent of Nevada 's water is supplied by melting snowpack that feeds the Colorado River.

DRI's team of scientists have been investigating the connection between polluted air and drought conditions over the past decade at the institute's Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL) atop Mt. Werner in the Rockies near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. At an elevation of 10,530 feet, this mountain-top lab is the ideal location for studying cloud physics and chemistry and observing in-cloud conditions not obtainable by airborne sampling platforms. The laboratory sits on a ridge in the Park Range, which is a climatological snowfall maximum for northwest Colorado . This is an ideal spot for observing microphysical cloud processes, including the formation of cloud droplets and ice crystals and the interaction of pollutants and natural particles with the cloud.